The Easter sunny

Last year's Franciscan Well Easter Festival got postponed due to snow. There was no chance of that this year: it was a glorious sunny weekend for the festival's 20th birthday outing, and as usual I went along on the Saturday. The two-bar linear format was preserved, so it was just a question of working side to side.

Beginning at the the top, then, my first was Witness Protection from YellowBelly. If you didn't guess from the name, it's a witbier. This is a simple and easy-going take on the style, and little on the dry side, but offers properly balanced quantities of citrus and coriander on a soft wheaty base. Unchallenging, but perfect summer quaffing.

Perhaps less seasonally appropriate was Wicklow Wolf's American Brown Ale, though it was a sessionable 4.2% ABV. The scarcity of brown ales has made me fussy about them and this one didn't deliver. It's thin and bitter rather than creamy and sweet. A few sips in and I found traces of chocolate and caramel but not enough to save it. Too much roast and too heavily hopped for my taste, I think. I'm looking for luxury in this style.

White Gypsy is one of several Irish breweries to have produced a beer using the Hunter heritage variety of malt. I covered the Porterhouse's recently, but didn't get much of a malt character from it. Huntor is different. While it starts out on a fruity waft of mandarin hops, the flavour is an assertive porridgey malt sweetness, wholesome, and glutinous. A hard bitterness follows, bringing North English bitter vibes to the clear gold beer, though it's a bit strong for one of those, at 5.8% ABV. It is interesting, and tasty. Maybe there's something to this Hunter thing after all.

Hilden Brewery was once a reliable fixture of the festival but hadn't been seen in some years. They don't even have a distributor in the Republic at the moment so I had completely lost track of their beers and was happy to see they'd been invited back. Hopended is an IPA in the New England style, and it's odd to see a veteran UK Real Ale brewer take that on. Though inappropriately dark orange, it has a lovely soft texture. The flavour is sweet though not juicy, tasting more of orangeade and sherbet, finishing with an old-school bitterness. It's an understated and charming take on NEIPA; not for the purists but enjoyable drinking nevertheless.

Beside it, Hilden Helles, the first lager I've ever had from them. It's a light 4.8% ABV and a clear pale yellow. I wouldn't normally criticise these for insufficient hops, but a bit more noble character would be welcome in this. As-is, there's a crisp soda-water base and a pinch of banana ester. The texture is spot-on: pillowy, and almost too viscous. Not an exciting beer, but then it's probably not meant to be. It's passable. In my memory, Hilden's Belfast Blonde was more enjoyable.

West Cork were late arrivals so it was a bit later before I got to try their new dry-hopped Mizen Helles. It wasn't straight after the Hilden but I'm very confident that they didn't compare favourably. Something went wrong here as there was a powerful rubbery sulphuric foretaste. They say pale lager gives off-flavours nowhere to hide, and this one wasn't even trying. A water treatment issue, perhaps? The hops give it a mild lemony note, which was nice, but not enough to un-ruin it. And I don't think this is me just being fussy about Helles: the beer was just badly made and frankly not fit for sale. Looks to me like West Cork doesn't have the hang of lager, and should put the warm-fermenting training wheels back on.

At the end of the row was UCC Pilot Brewery, a group which can normally be relied upon for something decently lagery. This year, Oida weissbier was as Teutonic as it got. It was an OK example of a style which is hard to impress with. 5% ABV and neither hot nor thin: the two cardinal sins. There's a gently soft texture, a clean green banana foretaste and some light caramel and toffee afterwards. Grand, like.

The saison next to it was called Thudinie and was 6.5% ABV. Most of the positive saison characteristics were here: gunpowder, spices, a touch of banana. It's clean and not hot, but something wasn't quite right. There was a stale and musty rasp haunting the flavour, a ghost at the feast. There are many reasons why saisons sometimes don't suit me -- it's a broad style, if it even is a style -- but this was a new one.

The intriguing oddity in the set was Orchard Brew, badged as a beer/cider hybrid and really just a mix of wort and apple juice fermented out to 4.4% ABV. The result tastes like cheap industrial cider, or even premium industrial cider: there's little difference. Lots of sugar, a vague appleyness, initially refreshing but cloying very quickly. For all that apple juice will attenuate away to almost nothing, there's no beer character coming up behind it. I don't think we needed the boffins of UCC to reinvent Bulmers for us.

And so to the opposite bar. Black Donkey has joined the barrel-ageing game with a rye ale matured in Jameson casks, called Double Barrel. It's a clear red gold colour, 9.5% ABV and with bags of vanilla. A basic and clean pale ale is rooted firmly in the background of the flavour profile, but the oak and the spirit really dominate the front. By what wizardry it doesn't get cloying or sickly I do not know, but there you go. Nip bottles of this would be super, and would be interesting to cellar a while, to see if it mellows.

JJ's brought a couple of new specials to the festival but I only got to try one: Witty Redhead, a cranberry witbier. The fruit (I guess) gives it a dark copper colour, while the texture is pleasingly light despite a substantial 5% ABV. The cranberries make a big contribution to the flavour, bitter yet summery, conjuring cosmopolitan sea breezes and sex on the beach. This mixes it with more traditional spritzy citrus, though mercifully without any savoury coriander. It's a tremendously fun fusion of classic style and gimmickry. Cranberry witbier definitely warrants further experimentation. You heard it here first.

Larkin's had two new ones on the go, beginning with The Drayman Cometh. It's 6.5% ABV and badged unassumingly as an amber lager, but my immediate thought on tasting is that it's a session doppelbock and I'm going to insist on that until it's official. It has all the smooth, clean caramel of doppelbock, and the requisite bite of liquorice bitterness. The toasted dark grain edges are present and correct too. With perfect balance, multifaceted complexity and effortless drinkability, this rivals their Baltic porters as Larkin's best work to date.

And then obviously there was a double IPA. Loose Cannon, 8% ABV, Citra and Vic Secret, was fine. An opaque orange, thick and sticky, with lots of cordial-like orange, it meets the minimum requirements of modern double IPA but doesn't do anything exciting or different with them.

Lough Gill's No Tracksuits imperial stout is not a new beer, but it's one I'd never tried before, always put off by the €10 price tag on the cans. €2.75 for a glass? I'm in. This feels and tastes every bit of its 12% ABV. The texture is muddily dense and syrup-thick. The alcohol is warming, just shading towards too hot for comfort. The flavour, meanwhile, is an onslaught of creamy milk chocolate and not very much else. A beer of subtle complexity it is not, but when only chocolatey booze will do, it works. There are better and cheaper beers around which meet the spec, however.

And then I ran out of festival. And almost out of time too. Just time for a quick one inside as I didn't want to pass up the rare opportunity to try beer from Dick Mack's brewery of Dingle. It was the Session IPA this time. Maybe it was the time of day and an overloaded palate, but this tasted odd to me. The hops were scant and instead (according to my still-legible notes) it tasted of creamy coconut with a sharp and salty bitterness. Unorthodox, but intriguing. A cursory thumbs up for now, and a promise to revisit this, should the opportunity arise.

A good mix, overall, and plenty besides that I didn't have the time or capacity to get to. This festival is still holding its own after two decades.